Long time smoker, First time grower. Lighting suggestions?

Hey guys i thought newbie central would be the best for this thread.
Anyways i want to start my first indoor grow (cupboard) i have been doing some research on lights and i have been looking at LED vs CFL .. I was wondering whats everyones preferences? are LED a good choice or can you recommend lights that you have purchased over the internet (is it a bad idea to buy them off the internet?) I'm only looking for something small .. Enough to do probably 2 plants with the space i have.
Any help would be much appreciated!
Peace

I like cfl over led because i like how cheap and easy it is to rig up cfl's, i like the DIY aspect of it also.

yea start out with some CLFs and continue to read and do a lot of research, only real way to learn is by doing it, and it is easy to upgrad later on, a few CLFs in 6500K would be a good and cheap way to start two plants, and wile they are small and in the vegetive stages they don't need that much light or nutrient or big pots, use the time to read more and get some bigger pots and some nutrients ready and find out what light you want to flower with, I for sure prefer HPS and small 250W could do the job of two plant ..

try to keep it simple, its easy to add stuff later on, but make sure you understand the basics and what the plant need, beside lots of light and a grow medium it also need food/nuts and water in the right PH and it will also need some fresh air/co2 circulation so a ventilation and a few fans is a must also so you can fit a carbon filter once they begin to flower/stink or your hole house will to, even from two small plants, I know out of experience

I'd rather a small wattage hps like 150w then cfl's or led

marcy said:

I'd rather a small wattage hps like 150w then cfl's or led

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Cant agree more. Start with best equipment possible

If you're gonna use led's might as well go all the way and buy a tent. They cost way too much for small cupboard grows. Cfl's give you the best bang for your buck. I would say start with 180 watts (actual wattage not equivalent) minimum.

Tokeonsmoke said:

Hey guys i thought newbie central would be the best for this thread.
Anyways i want to start my first indoor grow (cupboard) i have been doing some research on lights and i have been looking at LED vs CFL .. I was wondering whats everyones preferences? are LED a good choice or can you recommend lights that you have purchased over the internet (is it a bad idea to buy them off the internet?) I'm only looking for something small .. Enough to do probably 2 plants with the space i have.
Any help would be much appreciated!
Peace

Click to expand...

You can half ass it and get half assed product (which I have no idea why anyone would bother doing it for those results) or you can do it right and be proud of your final product.

Go with the tried and true indoor method. Get a digital ballast, use metal halide for veg and hps for flower. LED is the lighting source of the future IMO, but right now they are basically clueless and in a very long learning curve. On top of that, LED is ridiculously expensive without showing enough to warrant the expense.

you should go with the 150w hps/mh. i'm sure you'll be much happier with your final product

Personally I would go with the 400 watter hps/mh.
Check out HTGsupply, they have some pretty good deals.
The entire package with 2 bulbs (1 mh, 1 hps) and 6" glass tube is like 285 shipped to your door.
That is good for basically a 3x3 area.

..........................400w hps me thinks

some dimensions of the cuppord would be great man.

LED are too expensive for quality amd thats my bottom line opinion.

CFL would be great for a 2x2x4 cupboard, anything over that go with a HID

your going to need fans, medium and pots, nutrients and some lime to ammend your soil with.


bottom line, even a small grow can produce great buds but only educating yourself, getting the proper equipment (even if it is just cheap equipment (with the exception of LED's)) and learning as much as possible. If you already have a fairly decent green thumb with other plants chances are you will do just fine, theres really nothing special about canabis compared to other plants.

check this out!!



this is a DIY CFL fixture i made for around 30 bucks (not counting the light bulbs)

1 piece of strapping
1 disposable turkey roasting pan
14 sockets
1 roll of heavy duty contruction wire

add the light bulbs in and were up around 60 bucks depending on which ones you use, soft white CFL's are about 1/8 of the cost of daylight CFL's they claim daylight are the way to go for veg and soft white for flower....well you can veg under soft white and dont let anyone tell you differently so cut some costs back by just buying soft white as they are the prefered bulb for flowering anyways....and lets face it them flowers are the main goal in this endeavor.

or you could even go a bit simpler and do something like this


which is just a surge strip, Y sockets and a plug in light bulb socket.

maybe a 4 bulb t5.. chesk amazon..

I dont know why people act like cfl's are soooooo cheap. By the time you buy enough Cfl's, you'll have purchased:

5000-6500k for vegging
2700K flowering
Y adapters
Sockets
Power Strips

Take it from me, I have invested $100 plus easy to get the 400 watts of actual wattage I have on my plant now. You can easily get a nice 150 watt HPS for that. I'll be upgrading to LED next time, and using cfl as supplemental lighting.

CFL hands down.

Organique04 said:

I dont know why people act like cfl's are soooooo cheap. By the time you buy enough Cfl's, you'll have purchased:

5000-6500k for vegging
2700K flowering
Y adapters
Sockets
Power Strips

Take it from me, I have invested $100 plus easy to get the 400 watts of actual wattage I have on my plant now. You can easily get a nice 150 watt HPS for that. I'll be upgrading to LED next time, and using cfl as supplemental lighting.

Click to expand...

Yeah, they can add up. And I have kind of a mad-scientist way of DIY-ing stuff that always ruins my budget.

But the advantage is that you can start with a bit and then add more. I'm still on my grow bulbs - will need to buy the flower bulbs soon, I hope. In the mean time, I can learn all of the other stuff associated with my grow. I can also do a lot more research into better lighting. As much as I spent on the CFLs, I would hate to spend that much on one light and find out it is the wrong one for me.

Thanks everyone! all of these comments have been really helpful.
CFL sounds like the go but i will check out the HPS also when i go to the hardware store later.
I just went out this morning and got some lime.
Any other recommendations for what soils ect to pick up? i plan on getting some perlite also
thanks again